Brendan Read
TMC
CloudTC and N-Able Acquired
"Australian-owned IP PBX systems company, Vixtel, has completed the acquisition of Silicon Valley based glass phone developer, CloudTC, for an undisclosed figure,"...
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ProfitBricks: Where InfiniBand Meets Cloud 2.0
In a recent meeting with William Toll and Pete Johnson of ProfitBricks, the pair were ecstatic to explain how their company has...
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Proactive Care Puts Operators One Step Ahead
By Thomas Fuerst, Senior Director, Multimedia Solutions MarketingAlcatel-Lucent
Monitoring and analyzing network data proactively saves operators time, money, and customers.
When a network service fails, it makes headlines, ticks off customers, and costs that network operator money. When a failure is headed off in advance, on the other hand, there might not be praise-laden headlines, but it's newsworthy nonetheless.
The traditional approach to customer care has typically been: a disgruntled customer calls customer service and complains of a service interruption or problem; the rep, learning of it for the first time, sends out a technician the next day, and eventually finds a resolution. Often, customers are left feeling put out, and the operator has spent significant time and money resolving the problem. Even worse is the customer who doesn’t call and just feels this is ‘typical’ of their network experience. That is a customer at risk of leaving.
Proactive care flips this dynamic on its head by using predictive analytics to identify potential outages or errors in the network and stop them before they occur. It consists of three main parts: one, constantly monitoring and measuring data on the network; two, real-time analysis of the data; and three, the most important, acting on that analysis to fix the problem.
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10 Lessons from Volleyball
I've played volleyball for over 25 years. I have traveled around the US to watch the pros live - both indoor...
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Emerging Threats Combats a Million Plus Pieces of New Malware a Week
There are 250,000 plus new pieces of malware being produced each day equating to one piece per person in the US in...
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NFV-Based Software Telcos Need OSS/BSS Interoperability
One of the goals of ETSI NFV is to allow new entrants to provide solutions to carriers based on software instead of...
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SysAid's Lifshitz: The Cloud Will Dominate ITSM Market
Cloud computing has really become a household word with mainstream media outlets running stories on television about the growth in the space...
Full Story »Opportunity Knocks in Canada?
September 23, 2008While at ITEXPO West in L-A last week I saw a headline in USA Today "Opportunity Knocks in Canada". The story discussed how the petro-rich province of Alberta is recruiting skilled Americans to work there.
The other side of the picture is that US-serving contact centers located there are closing, such as Convergys' shuttering of its Red Deer site because of the high Canadian dollar that is largely fueled by the resource sector that has made services less competitive.
At the same time despite the widespread investments in predominantly nearshore contact centers throughout Canada over the past 12 years, there has not been the rapid expansion in IT and the subsequent movement up the skills and technologies food chain on any signficant scale there like that which has occurred in Ireland and is now taking place in India.
Home working, customer care insights from ITEXPO West
September 17, 2008While managing the SIP in the Contact Center Certification track at ITEXPO West yesterday I came across two excellent insights courtesy of the speakers and the attendees.
In a discussion following TDI CTO Mark Moore's session on enabling home-based agents arose the issue of how to manage bandwidth at home agents' premises, what with everyone else in the household tapping into wireless networks unbeknownst to the agents.
The concern is to make sure the demand on the pipe at home is not constricted to the point where agents cannot access applications they need. This can be an issue in many households, especially with teenagers...one that I will be looking into...and reporting back on.
Are You Prepared for the Next Disaster? Probably Not
September 12, 2008In every journalist's career one comes across a piece of research that makes one's head shake followed by a jaw drop and scream either silently or out loud if no one is around: "Are these people [fill in the blank] ???!!!"
The paper "Business as Usual? A Benchmarking Study of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity for Contact Centers ", published by DMG Consulting and sponsored by Empirix shockingly shows, if the survey sample is any indication, just how badly prepared contact centers to handle something as relatively minor as an ACD failure, let alone managing catastrophes like fires up to major events like hurricanes and yes terrorism.
The study, appropriately enough, arrived on my desk days before the seventh anniversary of 9-11 and in the middle of what is turning out to be the deadliest and most destructive hurricane season in three years, with Ike now at this writing threatening to destroy the Texas coast...
Here are the highlights, if you can call it that:
* Less than 37 percent of companies are confident that their operations can withstand a disaster or business disruption
* 60.2 percent of firms are not routinely testing their core contact center infrastructure.
Lessons From 9-11...No More 'Are You OK? E-mails'
September 11, 2008Seven years ago at about this time I am writing this, around 4pm, I was at a police station in New Jersey, waiting for a friend of my wife's to pick me up to take me to their home...
I had just gotten off a free-ride all-stops NJ Transit train from Hoboken, fed by shuttle buses from the New York Waterway ferry terminal in Weehawken...upwind from the plumes of smoke arising from Ground Zero.
My goal was to walk across one of the bridges that linked New Jersey to Staten Island, where we lived, and get my car and drive out to see my wife at a hospital where she was with my sister-in-law, who had suffered a heart attack while we walked from our then-midtown Manhattan offices to the ferry. But the police said they weren't even letting pedestrians through...
Meanwhile we hadn't heard from our son, a paramedic.
There's No Place Like Show...Like ITEXPO West
September 10, 2008There is a wealth of ways to find out and learn more about new products and services. The Internet has proven to be an exceptionally versatile channel for this information, with online demos and the ability to interact with suppliers.
Yet when all is said and done there is still nothing like going to a conference/trade show floor and checking out the solutions and the exhibitors one-on-one, face-to-face, to get realtime information and answers to your specific needs via your multitude of senses.
For those reasons I strongly encourage you to attend ITEXPO WEST and make time to visit the show floor to visit the exhibitors to see what's new and what will be new in the way of solutions that could help your organization be the best it can be.
Come to Class at ITEXPO West!
September 8, 2008
One of the coolest aspects of ITEXPO WEST is TMC University. The reason: nothing beats testing and certification on hard topics to drive learning and retain information that you can use and impart to others when you return. TMC University, along with finding out about the latest in solutions, offers high ROI from attending ITEXPO WEST for both time and for travel budgets.
TMC University provides full day training courses that validate and test your knowledge of key subject areas such as Microsoft OCS, FMC/Mobility, SIP, SaaS, and SIP in the contact center.
Labor Day Message: Treat Your Workers Well and Be Rewarded
August 28, 2008When heading off for the Labor Day weekend, think of the people who make it possible: those who work for you like your contact center agents and supervisors for whom Labor Day is a workday where they deliver the customer service that we all depend on.
And when thinking of your staff examine ways in which you can treat them better, so that they can become more productive and loyal that in turn leads to higher revenues, lower costs, and greater customer satisfaction. You may even be recognized by your peers for the results that you have achieved.
InfoCision has proven that looking after your staff pays off.
SpeechTEK Notes...
August 22, 2008Personalization:Several notes from SpeechTEK, held earlier this week in New York City:
--The industry is waiting for 'G', as in 3G, to enable integrated voice/visual (web/video) solutions to mobile customers. These tools have been under development but have no real place to go in the North American market until the wireless carriers upgrade their platforms to permit these applications
--Legislation/regulations are affecting offerings. Handsfree wireless laws create a need for integrated voice/web interfaces. The new FTC TSR amendments prohibit outbound pre-recorded telemarketing messages unless there is express consent
--Personalization: the ability to engage automated systems with customers becoming extremely important to improve success rates, customer satisfaction rates, and sales
--Speech analytics becoming key as enterprises want to mine calls to learn more about their customers
--Call avoidance i.e.
Forget SpeechTek: The Buzz Is With Aumtech/MS Speech Rec
August 18, 2008There are instances with technology where the right tools and the right players come together to kickstart it into high gear. Examples include Robert Stephenson and the steam locomotive, Thomas Edison with the electric light, Henry Ford and the automobile, Boeing with 707 jet airliner, and Bill Gates Jr. and the PC.
That instance may be happening right now, again with Mr. Gates but also with Aumtech and speech rec. Aumtech's new tool to connect its IVRs with Microsoft's powerful speech rec engines appear to make speech tools affordable, slicing per-seat licensing fees from $3,000 to $10.
